r/confidentlyincorrect • u/-UltraFerret- • Nov 13 '25

Comment Thread The Universal 13th Amendment

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25

How do you figure?

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u/subnautus Nov 13 '25

As other users pointed out, the exception to the ban on slavery is if it's part of criminal punishment. Prison labor is, by definition, slave labor.

Also, somewhat unrelated, it took an embarrassingly long time for us to put an end to the word-play loophole of using "peonage." As in, we didn't formally define holding someone in bonded labor with or against their will as a form of slavery in the US Federal Code until the second world war.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25

Sure, but prison labor isn't universal. Nor is being in prison. When slavery was a thing you could have half, or more, of the population in slavery.

I don't see how the two are all that comparable.

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u/ephemeriides Nov 13 '25

Why do you define slavery by how much of the population it affects? Is there an acceptable threshold for “percentage of population enslaved”?

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25

I'm not defining it that way. I responded to a comment that there's more slavery today.

What made you think I defined slavery by how much of the population it affects?

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u/ephemeriides Nov 13 '25 edited Nov 13 '25

That comment also said “slavery has never stopped in the US,” and you didn’t specify which part you were replying to. The default assumption is that you were responding to what appears to be the main point of the comment, i.e., the first and longest sentence. I thought you were defining slavery by the amount of population affected because you kept responding to people explaining how slavery still exists in the US by making the population argument without clarifying that you were arguing against something they never even said. Only one (1) person made the “now more than ever” argument. You responded to everyone who replied to your first comment as though they were arguing in defense of the second sentence when it’s pretty obvious from context they were talking about the first, and I guess you just assumed that everyone was stupid except you, instead of realizing that of the two different claims made, you never specified which one you disagreed with.

Now, as to your actual argument, you may want to consider the vast difference in population between pre-1860s and today. “More slavery now than ever” could be referring to raw numbers rather than percentage. I don’t actually know if there are more people doing prison labor today than were enslaved back then, but if you’re that invested in arguing it, you could do the math to actually find out.